10 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT DEMARCUS LAWRENCE: In two seasons at Boise State, Lawrence (6-3, 251) had 20 sacks, 34 tackles for loss, seven forced fumbles, one fumble recovery, one interception and 120 total tackles.

“He’s really tough,” Cowboys defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli cooed almost lovingly, upping the ante when asked to describe the finest qualities of the second-round draft choice the team desperately needs to be its dominant pass rusher this season.

But aren’t all football players by definition “tough”?

Yes, Marinelli, the ex-Marine whose résumé includes Vietnam combat service, conceded on the final day of last month’s minicamp. But there are degrees. According to his calculus, “really tough” is the ultimate while “finesse” can almost sound like a dirty word.

Across the Cowboys’ Valley Ranch locker room, Lawrence, the 6-3, 250-pound rookie penciled in to immediately play right defensive end and, it’s hoped, wreak havoc on opposing quarterbacks, sat up taller, puffed his chest wider and smiled broader when apprised of Marinelli’s assessment.

To be sure, when training camp opens this week in Oxnard, Calif., Lawrence’s toughness and pass-rushing ability will be under a microscope, particularly in trench battles with Tyron Smith, who may be the NFL’s gold standard at offensive left tackle.

“Tough is the only way to grow up where I come from,” said Lawrence, who turned 22 in April, a month before the NFL draft. “I had to fight for everything from the time I was born.”

Where Lawrence comes from is rural South Carolina. The official biographies say he’s from Aiken, population 30,000, about 20 miles east of Augusta, Ga. Truth be told, he’s not from such a metropolis.

Lawrence is from New Ellenton, S.C., about 10 miles south of Aiken. It’s a town of almost 2,000 and, if you believe Lawrence as a tour guide, it should not be mistaken for idyllic, mythical Mayberry, up over the North Carolina border.

New Ellenton was born in the 1950s, a Cold War invention of President Harry Truman, in the process of adding to the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Ellenton, the town’s predecessor, was deemed a perfect place to produce plutonium and tritium for hydrogen bombs. To that end, the government displaced the population 14 miles to the north to New Ellenton and in Ellenton’s place established what is still called the relatively benign-sounding Savannah River Plant.

Mayor Vernon Dunbar is proud of his New Ellenton but concedes it “has some bad things kids can get into in a place where there are not a lot of outlets for them.”

“Kids really had to be tough,” said Dunbar, who works at the nuclear plant and was a high school classmate of DeMarcus’ Lawrence’s father, Tyrone, as well as future iconic NFL defensive lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry.

That’s “tough,” like when DeMarcus was 7 and a teenage boy, a friend of his older brother, began “roughing me up on a basketball court.”

DeMarcus said he fought back because he had no choice. His world was watching for any sign of weakness. The older boy clamped DeMarcus in a front headlock and repeatedly pounded his head. But he wouldn’t concede.

And so for his fighting for his manhood, Lawrence was dubbed “Tank,” a nickname he proudly carries to his day.

“What I remember most about DeMarcus is that if you didn’t bother him, he didn’t bother you,” said Dunbar, serving his third term as mayor. “But if you did mess with him, he could hold his own.”

Running start

Tyrone Lawrence was determined that his youngest son, DeMarcus, would grow up capable of holding his own, tough and independent.

So father, who has sweated for 34 years making his living in front of a 2,300-degree furnace at a giant fiberglass plant, insisted son get to and from high school football practice on foot. Running the several miles each way was preferable, father said in a telephone conversation last month.

DeMarcus made his pilgrimages in heat and cold, in rain and wind. Lightning was the boy’s only passport to the luxury of a ride, father said.

But not in his own car. DeMarcus didn’t have one. Even so, father made sure son learned how to change tires, transmissions and engines.

Father had a power lawn mower. Son pushed his own. Father had a blower for leaves. Son had a rake.

Meanwhile DeMarcus’ mother, Yvonne, taught him how to cook dinner for the family by the time he was 12. When older sister LaShondra’s husband died and she moved back home but still worked, DeMarcus cooked for her, her three children, his parents and a grandmother.

Among his specialties, DeMarcus said, were chicken Alfredo, macaroni and cheese, and just about any kind of pasta dish.

“I can cook,” he said definitively, sensing skepticism in the air.

End of discussion.

“A boy must learn to be a man who stands on his feet, to provide for his family,” said Tyrone Lawrence, explaining the parenting philosophy he has shared with Yvonne, who still works as a cook near the Savannah River Plant. “I trained him that no one gives you anything. You have to go out and earn everything. It was tough love, but effective.”

But Tyrone and Yvonne believed they had a far more pressing responsibility: keeping their family safe.

When a police chase led to the arrest of a drug dealer in the backyard of the Lawrence family home in the gritty New Ellenton neighborhood known as Dodge City, Yvonne insisted it was time to move to a more peaceful setting.

“We didn’t have a lot of material things to give him,” Tyrone said. “But we wanted to make sure he had a decent life opportunity.”

And so the family moved to Windsor, population 121.

“DeMarcus walked everywhere from there,” his father said. “But he never hung out at clubs or the mall. There were no clubs, and the closest mall is 30 miles away.”

Football ‘passion’

At Silver Bluff High School, a perennial small-school power in South Carolina, coach Al Lown played the relatively small DeMarcus at tight end on offense as well as defensive end.

“Football became my passion,” DeMarcus said. “It was a place where I could release all my angry energy instead of doing bad things on the street.”

DeMarcus may not appreciate it, but Lown, whose teams have won 200 games and five state titles in his tenure as the Bulldogs’ coach, chuckled when the conversation turned to Lawrence’s toughness.

“I understand he wants to portray he’s kind of bad,” Lown said “But he can be a softy.”

DeMarcus enjoyed a growth spurt in the 10th grade, but still major colleges didn’t have much interest in a 6-2, 210-pound defensive end who was struggling in the classroom.

Lown said South Carolina State, a Football Championship Subdivision school, was interested in Lawrence, but that was about it for four-year schools.

“I didn’t care much about school back then,” DeMarcus said. “I had a hard time understanding why I needed school. It seemed like everybody was telling me, ‘You can’t make it.’ Nobody but my family believed in me. For a long time, I believed the negative voices.”

But he did have the opportunity to attend Kansas’ Butler Community College, where he rehabilitated his grades while gaining strength and weight and honing his toughness. In his second year at the school, he was named a national junior college second-team All-American.

DeMarcus said he heard from schools such as Tennessee, Ole Miss, Kansas State and Oklahoma but settled on the one farthest from home, Boise State, 2,300 miles from Windsor because “that’s where I fit in best.”

Boise State success

Lessons learned and play on the field at Boise State catapulted Lawrence to the 34th pick early in the second round of the NFL draft. So desperate were the Cowboys for his services as a replacement for the departed DeMarcus Ware that they traded two picks — No. 47 and No. 78 — to move up 13 spots.

At Boise, DeMarcus had 20½ tackles for loss and 10½ sacks last season. The scouts were impressed with his speed and his oversized “violent” hands that he used to ward off blockers.

“DeMarcus was not the biggest, but he was the toughest,” said Andy Avalos, who coached the defensive line in Lawrence’s two seasons in Boise. “On game day, when you go into an alley, you want him in your corner. He can be a big Teddy Bear, but when it’s time to roll, he’ll roll over you.”

On the flip side, Lawrence served three one-game suspensions in two seasons for what remain unspecified violations of team rules.

Lawrence blamed “childish behavior” for the suspensions.

Avalos said he would tell anyone interested in listening that Lawrence has “matured” and “grown” in his time in Boise.

The Cowboys are satisfied that his maturation now matches his toughness and his determination to succeed.

“We felt like those are issues that are in his past,” head coach Jason Garrett said after the draft. “He is the kind of guy we want to bring to this football team.”

Marinelli, the defensive coordinator, has been effusive about Lawrence’s potential to replace Ware, who has taken his pass rush to the Denver Broncos.

“I think we got the right one,” Marinelli said, noting Lawrence’s tenacity. “If he gets beat, he just comes back harder the next time.”

Back in South Carolina, a labor dispute at the fiberglass plant is keeping Tyrone, DeMarcus’ father, away from work. On the day his son signed a four-year contract that will pay in the neighborhood of $5.5 million, Tyrone, who is 55 and grew up rooting for the Cowboys’ “Doomsday” defense that featured sack king Harvey Martin, lamented his idleness.

“At least DeMarcus is working,” the father said. “That’s what he has prepared for his whole life.”

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